Plainfield, Wisconsin – The man who inspired a generation of horror icons, Ed gein, has resurfaced in the public consciousness with Netflix’s “monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” sparking renewed interest in the cases that haunted American in the 20th century. While Dahmer’s crimes are the focus of the series,Gein‘s earlier,equally disturbing acts laid a chilling foundation for the cultural understanding of serial killers and the macabre.
born in 1906, Gein lived a reclusive life on his family’s farm in rural Wisconsin with his mother, Augusta, and brother Henry. Following the deaths of his father in 1944 and brother in 1947, Gein became increasingly isolated and fixated on his domineering mother. After Augusta’s death in 1958,Gein began exhuming bodies from local cemeteries,fashioning trophies and household items from their remains.
Law enforcement discovered the extent of Gein’s crimes in 1957 after a hardware store clerk reported that Gein had attempted to purchase chemicals to tan human skin. A subsequent search of the Gein farm revealed a horrifying collection: skulls fashioned into bowls, lampshades made of human skin, furniture upholstered with skin, and numerous other body parts meticulously preserved.
Gein confessed to killing two women – Bernice Eden in 1954 and Mary Hogan in 1957 – though authorities suspect he may have been responsible for more. Initially convicted of first-degree murder in Worden’s death, he was eventually declared not guilty by reason of insanity – diagnosed as schizophrenic – and was institutionalized until his death due to complications from cancer in 1984.
Gein’s crimes shocked his community and the country. “He’s a kind of meek, unremarkable man who could have been your neighbor. And there’s something eerie about that, that is disruptive to our collective ideas of, ‘What is a monster?'” saeid Jooyoung Lee, a serial homicide researcher at the University of Toronto, in “Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein.”
The case even spawned a macabre fandom. In 2001, The Los Angeles Times reported that “Apparently there are 182 websites devoted to Ed Gein,” according to producer Hamish McAlpine of the 2000 film “Ed gein.” “There is even an Ed Gein fan club. You can buy Ed Gein memorabilia. You can buy a bust of ed Gein, Ed Gein ashtrays and even Ed Gein calendars.”
Gein’s disturbing actions profoundly impacted popular culture,serving as a key inspiration for several iconic horror works. Robert Bloch’s novel “Psycho,” and Alfred Hitchcock’s subsequent 1960 film adaptation, drew heavily from Gein’s story, particularly the intense mother-son relationship. In the film,Norman Bates,like Gein,exhibits a severe attachment to his mother,committing murders driven by a dissociative identity disorder. “A boy’s best friend is his mother,” bates famously says in the film.
Director Jonathan Demme cited Gein as one of the serial killers who inspired the villain buffalo bill in “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), who, like Gein, skinned his victims.Similarly, tobe Hooper, director of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” recalled hearing stories about Gein from relatives in Wisconsin as a child, describing him as a “real boogeyman” that stayed with him. Hooper’s film features Leatherface wearing a mask made of human flesh. “They told us the story about this man who lived in the next town from them, about 27 miles or so, who was digging up graves and using the bones and skin in his house,” Hooper said in a 2015 interview. “That was all I knew about it. They didn’t mention his name.”
